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aftertaf writes "North Korea claims to have achieved nuclear fusion by building what it describes as a 'unique thermo-nuclear reaction device.' This announcement was met by skepticism on just about every news website this side of Saturn. Pyongyang claims its latest scientific breakthrough coincides with the birthday of the country's founder and eternal president Kim Il-sung. This is not the first time it seems that the laws of nature have been bent in his honor. According to official biographies, when his son, Kim Jong-il, was born, a new star appeared in the sky." No doubt the Dear Leader combined the atomic nuclei by hand.

Actually, I read an interview of a British researcher that has been studying North Korea for decades and has been there several times. He says that North Korea is actually a fascist country. Their system is based on an almost religious cult for the Dear Leader and racist belief in the superiority of the Korean race.
Communism is only in outgoing propaganda. They carefully craft some propaganda in Korean only for their own use, and a different one in English to show to the world.

I wish I could post a link to the interview, I can't remember it. Very interesting, it made my chin fall a few times.

In principle, any orbit with a period equal to the Earth's rotational period is technically geosynchronous; however, the term is often used to refer to the special case of a geosynchronous orbit that is circular (or nearly circular) and at zero (or nearly zero) inclination, that is, directly above the equator. This is customarily called a geostationary orbit.

Of course, that would make it a bit too conspicuous to be a good spy satellite.

In addition, even the ultra-high-resolution cameras in spy satellites would probably not be of that much use from geostationary orbit (GEO), since GEO is very far away (~36,000 km). Spy satellites are likely put in a polar Low Earth Orbit (LEO) at approx. 200 km altitude. This gives much more detailed images, and also allows the satellite to cover the entire Earth without spending any fuel.

Not even. Read the GP's wiki link for a description of a "Farnsworth fusor" (not the Farnsworth you're thinking of, but rather his namesake). Making fusion reactions occur is trivially easy, to the point where there exists at least one hobbyist who's made a fusor in his basement. Betcha that's what NK has built, and the claim of it being a "unique thermo-nuclear reaction device" was likely tacked on by some lackey in the propaganda department. Again, old news in the fusion world, as fusors aren't useful for much other than proof of concept.

Getting a net gain in energy with a fusion reaction? Hard. The only way we've done it to date is in a thermonuclear warhead, and I guarantee Pyongyang doesn't have one of those yet, since they've had enough trouble getting basic fission bombs built.

Fusors actually do have practical uses. Fusors have been used commercially as a compact neutron source that can be turned on or off easily. Note that the other commercial neutron sources of a similar sort actually also use fusion. They work by using a linear accelerator to collide deuterium and tritium.

We name is PRINCE WUNDAI, my family is ONE OF the largest farmer in Nigeria. Father was captured by Warlord who is trying to steal our family fortune. To secure our family, decided we are to looking for a country we can trust to help us smuggle the grain to a safe location.

We picked your country, NORTH KOREA, because of your honest reputation. We'd like to offer you 50% (HALF) of the grain for your help in securing the rest against warlords and USA aggression.

The grain is packed on ships, waiting on the name of a port to deliver it to.

We need only small bribes for the Somalian pirates to let our ships pass, and we will be on our way.

It's also possible they've assembled one of Bussard's whiffleball fusors [rexresearch.com]. Not tremendously complicated, and if you threw a couple hundred million at it (assuming the theory behind it were correct) you might get a practical reactor.

As you say. I RTFA and it hardly made any claim, except perhaps optimism. Even in US advertising, puffery is not actionable.

But I recalling hearing there were perhaps a 100 sort of credible low-cost approaches. Pick one, spend a million dollars, and you could have scientific feasibility. I suspect their cost structure is different than ours, so they could have tried a number of approaches. Given that they did nukes, I am not sure really poor need be a big thing to get to feasibility. But whoever in th

I was going to say, why is everyone laughing this off? It's very unlikely to be true. But we seem to be laughing at it because "our scientists are obviously better than their scientists."

Yes, it's probably BS. But it isn't BS until it is disproven. And yes, there isn't anything there to disprove right now. And sure, we haven't been able to achieve net positive fusion yet. Net negative fusion is pretty easy. I wouldn't expect useful fusion to be achieved by the old methods. I would expect it to come

Copious and plentiful electric power is always available. Only enemies of our glorious leader would say otherwise. Please step outside and shout "I'm a capitalist sympathizer" until dawn so that our efficient protectors of society can find and bring you to justice.

Of course, his cute little puppet hands would do the trick. Being created by those wacky South Park Puppeteers Matt Stein and Trey Parkhurst has its advantages. Team America, although huge dicks, should be alerted post haste!

In other news; I have just perfected Quantum Computing and the language of the Quantum Computer; QBasic, but am waiting to announce it on my birthday. We are still trying to license Q-Bert for our mascot. Stay tuned and subscribe to my newsletterings!

In 1949 one of the several nazi leaders that fled to Argentina claimed to have achieved nuclear fussion [wikipedia.org]. The president, a fascist who welcomed Mengele and Eichman, was not stupid, and a couple of months later he called a group of argentinian scientists back from europe to open an investigation, which led to the end of the project and the beginning of real atomic research.

But at some point, shouldn't all the planets be on this side of Saturn? That is, if Saturn is on one side of the sun, and all the other planets happen to be on the other? This should eventually happen if none of their orbits is a multiple of another.

Indeed right now all the planets (in our Solar System) are on this side of Saturn [heavens-above.com]. Of course, only two of these can ever be on the far side of it from us. That's right, I'm not counting Pluto as a planet.

For some reason I can't help but think that it would be hilarious and kind of scary if everyone chuckles a bit at this and in a couple of months news reports come in saying that for some strange reason the long-running North Korean energy crisis seems to have been solved...

Makes you wonder what would happen then. I'm guessing a small nuke would go off in their research area, which the west would blame on their own experiments. At the same time, all nations of moderate or higher economic means would dump research into the subject under the idea that "if North Korea could do it, so can we".

If North Korea's done this in any meaningful way, then their economic troubles are over. They won't be asking for aid or concessions, they'll be getting rich selling energy and possibly even technology. They won't be testing missiles, they'll be developing frickin' laser beams.

Would their problems be over? If it's something NK can produce, then it's a matter of a clever trick, not sophistocated technology. If they sold one to anyone else, then the secret gets out, and the game is over. If they don't sell one to anyone else, all they can sell is electrical power. And transmission technology limits how much and how far you could sell infinitely cheap power until it becomes cheaper to just generate it locally with Coal. Even if it's true, it seems kind of like a cave-man with a

Actually, North Korea has already done an amazing job of keeping down energy use. By restricting electricity to a handful of elites and starving everyone else, they've been able to reduce their carbon footprint to almost nothing. Just look at the results [globalsecurity.org]. Glorious leader has produced a much more efficient country than that wasteful South Korea!

No, it would be a great thing. Even if they are our 'enemy,' it is clear by this point that they don't actually want to fight us, and the technology would eventually make it to the rest of the world, much faster than it is the way we are doing it.

For some reason I can't help but think that it would be hilarious and kind of scary if everyone chuckles a bit at this and in a couple of months news reports come in saying that for some strange reason the long-running North Korean energy crisis seems to have been solved...

Well, North Koren could release another news report saying just that very thing and if nothing else satellite imagery could verify at least that much of the story by looking at North Korea at night.

But anyway, if they were able to do it, which I doubt, that would mean that it definitely can be done, it's just a matter of figuring out how to do it. Right now nobody knows if it's really even possible to do it or not. The main surprise to me is that they didn't give the Dear Leader credit for the breakt

One day North Korea will fall apart and it will reunite with South Korea and then we're going to have a lot of seriously pissed off North Koreans who simply cannot believe that they fell for all that crap about the Kims for so long.

I think it's more likely we'll have a bunch of confused North Koreans who don't understand why the rest of the world does not believe all the great things their "dear leader" has done - and probably alot of cults that try to spread their Kim-jong-il beliefs to "save" everyone.

I can live with that, but I really want to know where I can buy a pair of those glasses. It was only a month ago when they revealed that Kim Jong Il was setting fashion trends around the world [abcnews.com], so I'd like to sport those glasses. The retro aviator style glasses are out, Kim Jong Il's glasses are IN.

If you listen to some people, the west has been wasting a lot of money on things like ITER, when some cheaper, less brute-force, approaches could work better. If they're right, then a country that doesn't have the resources to try the large-scale experiments might have more success.

On the other hand, given the veracity of past press releases from North Korea, this reactor might be powered by powdered unicorn.

In ancient Greece and Rome, it wasn't unusual for someone to claim either that a new star appeared in the sky to herald a great person's birth or that they became a star following their death. This latter claim is known as catasterism and was pretty popular from the time of the Hellenistic kings to the Julio-Claudian dynasty at Rome.

Catasterism is a frequent subject on coin portraits, with a star positioned about the portrait of the ruler. There is a very famous series of coins depicting Augustus fastening a star above the head of Marcellus, the man he had hoped would succeed him.

Of course the import of all of this is that, as with so much else, North Korea is about 2,000 years behind the times.

I know this is going to offend some people, but since most of the mythology around Jesus Christ is already borrowed from other mythological traditions, I expect that this is the origin of the Star of Bethlehem that is supposed to have appeared over Joshua Bar Joseph's birthplace when he was born. It would make sense for early Christians to have borrowed this story as well if it would help make their religion more popular with the Romano-Graecian population in the near east.

Or, perhaps God planned it on purpose exactly like that, so that the “magi from the East” would recognise Jesus’ birth and come to worship him, fulfilling prophecies such as Isaiah 60:3 [biblegateway.com].

Isa. 60 is a passage which is a messianic prophecy. Like many messianic prophecies from the Old Testament, it does not clearly differentiate between the first coming of Jesus as a baby and his return in glory and his reign as predicted in Revelation, but it’s not too difficult to see where it switches over. Verses 1-3 refer to his birth:

“Arise, shine, for your light has come,and the glory of the LORD rises upon you.

Overpopulation is a pretext for racists [wikipedia.org] to advocate “population control” whereby they hope to address the poverty that breeds itself, particular in certain segments of the population who cannot seem to keep their legs closed. This is all supported with arguments such as follows:

It is a vicious cycle; ignorance breeds poverty and poverty breeds ignorance. There is only one cure for both, and that is to stop breeding these things. Stop bringing to birth children whose inheritance cannot be one of health or intelligence. Stop bringing into the world children whose parents cannot provide for them. Herein lies the key of civilization. For upon the foundation of an enlightened and voluntary motherhood shall a future civilization emerge.

Aww, hell. I’m forgetting where I am. I should’ve just said she was strongly against masturbation...

In my experience as a trained nurse while attending persons afflicted with various and often revolting diseases, no matter what their ailments, I have never found any one so repulsive as the chronic masturbator. It would be difficult not to fill page upon page of heartrending confessions made by young girls, whose lives were blighted by this pernicious habit, always begun so innocently, for even after they have ceased the habit, they find themselves incapable of any relief in the natural act. [...] Perhaps the greatest physical danger to the chronic masturbator is the inability to perform the sexual act naturally.

Just out of curiosity, what part of "No peasants are starving, our economy is great, everyone else in the world envies/fears us, and by the way we just perfected nuclear fusion!" is a *mild* hallucination?